The title of the show takes its root in Sanskrit and refers to one’s ability to be free from dualities. The concept of Nirdvandva was later popularized in the realm of psychology by Carl Jung who used it as a frame for discussing Hegelian dialectics and the notion of transcendence. It is the ethos of Nirdvandva that is shared in the art practices of both Del Rosario and Lewis.

Although invested in material process, decay and regeneraton, both artists arrive at this commonality through their own trajectory. Del Rosario’s interrogation of sculpture recalls early memories of living in The Philippines and of witnessing objects devolve into detritus, get beaten into the earth, and then slowly grow as they compound with other materials in their proximity. Her sculptures speak to the life cycles many urban materials face as they are extracted from nature, transformed by industry only to be discarded and then consumed again by the planet until they recapitulate themselves as hybrid objects – incapable of performing their part within the logic of their desired mechanism, but mutated from nature. In Lewis’ practice the life cycle of materials articulate themselves on the canvas through a process that fluctuates between additive gesture and forced erosion. Sometimes this manifests itself in the literal application of materials such as wheat-paste posters and newsprint that are later scraped away. Sometimes this relationship is merely implied by the topographical effect that comes from mixing and manipulating paint that does not bind with its substract. Embedded in his sensibility is Lewis’ relationship to his own background as a musician and the cathartic power of post-punk noise.